Chapter 7.

"Kiss me again, my love. Don't go away from me. I couldn't bear it. Oh! dont go away from me. My brother...No; never mind. He didn't mean it. He was in jest....But you, oh! can't you forgive me for to-night? I will work so hard, and try to improve. Don't be cruel to me, because I love you better than anything in the world. After all, it is only once that I have not pleased you. But you are quite right, Dorian. I should have shown myself more of an artist. It was foolish of me; and yet I couldn't help it. Oh, don't leave me, don't leave me!" A fit of passionate sobbing choked her. She crouched on the floor like a wounded thing, and Dorian Gray, with his beautiful eyes, looked down on her, and his chiseled lips curled in exquisite disdain. There is always something ridiculous about the emotion of people whom one has ceased to love. Sibyl Vane seemed to him to be absurdly melodramatic. Her tears and sobs annoyed him.

Wilde uses an almost stream of consciousness style in Sibyl's dialogue only, it is outloud. We see this in the quick transitions of thought, and general incoherency; she goes from thinking of kissing to pleading him not to leave to worrying about her brother's threat to begging for forgiveness. This style of dialogue portrays Sibyl's innocence and purity. There is very little filtering between her thought and her speech. What she feels she expresses. Her inability to think, filter, then speak also portrays her distress and despair. Furthermore, Wilde uses a simile to compare her to "a wounded thing." By dehumanizing Sibyl, he accentuates her sad sad state. Sibyl is also dehumanized in being seen as melodramatic. Dorian had fallen in love with her because of her acting, and it is quite fitting that he now fall out of love with her because of her loss of acting skill. However, Dorian's seeing her as only a character and not an actual person devalues her life and strips her of her humanity. The purpose of Sibyl being characterized in this way is to juxtapose her pathetic state to Dorian's heartlessness. This passage highlights Dorian's change for the worse. We, the readers, see him turning from a sweet little kid to a disciple of the influential Lord Henry.

Also in Sibyl's speech is the repeated beseech not to leave her; this conveys her frighteningly strong attachment and dependance on Dorian that forms after only a few meetings. In the syntax, we see choppy sentences that show her franticness, and we also see the use of two ellipses bookending her reference to her brother. This draws attention to the reference, and we see the foreshadow in the line. The reader is reminded of her brother's omnious threat to kill Dorian if he ever treat his sister badly, and wonders if this threat will, in fact, be carried out.

In describing Dorian, Wilde utilizes gorgeous diction. Wilde describes Dorian as having "beautiful eyes," "chiseled lips," and even "exquisite disdain." Dorian is god-like and Sibyl is a small thing who has displeased him. Her lines evoke emotion in the reader her "I will work so hard, and try to improve" is terrible. Either she or I know very little of love. His degradation of her is throrough and absolute. Irony is created in the incongruity of such gorgeous details and such terrible actions.

"There is always something ridiculous about the emotion of people whom one has ceased to love." What a gorgeously hideous line.